


made hell grant what love did seek

by Marianne_Dashwood



Series: what love seeks [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Apocalyptic Imagery, Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Choices Matter, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode 160 - The Eye Opens, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Good Cows, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Slight horror aspects because it is TMA, Soft Apocalypse, Soul Bond, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, adding in tags as i add characters, because that's a thing in this story now, reckless kindness, they're in love and boyfriends because i said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-16 19:27:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21276458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marianne_Dashwood/pseuds/Marianne_Dashwood
Summary: short insights after the end of the world.its a tuesday when the world ends. martin saw three good cows, and one excellent chicken. then the world ripped itself apart and he was standing in a nightmarepost-160





	1. can't promise you fair sky above

**Author's Note:**

> well, i think i'm not alone in saying that 160 killed me. i'm a mess and yet, i'm desperate for that soft apocolypse mood.
> 
> i will be adding more to this as i get around to writing more, but lets just say i've adopted a rather more optimistic view on what might happen in S5.
> 
> well, about as optimistic as i can get.
> 
> title from Milton  
chapter title from 'promises' from hadestown  
both are about the myth of orpheus' journey into the underworld.  
make of that what you will
> 
> hope you enjoy! please expect more, slightly happier installments!

It stops raining when Martin leads Jon inside. He hadn’t known what to do, but held and gently rocked the other man as his laughs turned to wretched sobs. He tries not to think about his manic face, the laughs being pulled from him like teeth and tears streamed down his face and the sky stared back at them. 

It’s only two steps to the door, but it feels like an age. The feeling of being watched doesn’t go away. Martin supposes it never will. Apart from the broken glass from the front windows, and the scattered statements all over the floor, the inside of the cottage is untouched by the chaos outside. No silver worms, no darkness creeping in, no flesh oozing through the cracks in the floorboards. 

Gently, he sits Jon down on the tatty tasteless sofa. The other man has gone silent, even though his shoulders still shake, and fresh tears are on his cheeks. Martin had hated the laughter, despised the sobs (because Jon should never ever look so broken, so guilty, so terrified), but the silence scared him more. In this new world of horror, it was the silence that shook Martin, threw him back to the fog covered world of the Lonely. 

If he had stayed there, then maybe he wouldn’t have had to watch Jon break down. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to contend with the apocalypse. As soon as the thoughts passed through his mind, he bit them down. No. This wasn’t the time. He couldn’t fall to pieces now. Jon needed him. 

“Stay here, okay?” He says, as if there is nowhere else left to go. “I’m going to board up the windows.”

Jon makes no indication that he even heard Martin, but martin gently squeezes his hands anyway, tries to ignore how they are shaking. 

It takes him a little while, trying to find wood and nails and a hammer and then actually doing DIY to the windows, but after an hour or so, the wind is no longer sweeping through the cottage, and screaming in the distance is harder to hear.

Jon sits and watches, and doesn't say a word. The statements are next, and while picking them out of glass shards on the floor, Martin’s stomach drops when he recognises the familiar looping handwriting on the page.

_ Hello Jon… don’t try to stop reading… I chose you… now, repeat after me… _

Martin throws the paper to the floor, feeling bile in his throat. Elias, no, Jonah Magnus had done this. Orchestrated all of this, everything that had happened to them. Everything he had done to try and stop all of this, everything Jon had done... 

“It’s all my fault.” Jon says, quiet enough that Martin doesn’t realise he had spoken for a second. “If I’d just looked a little longer, if I was stronger I could of -”

“No.” Martin is at his side in a moment, kneeling at his knees and closing his hands around Jon’s. They’ve stopped shaking. “Jon, it wasn’t your fault. He made you, I can’t even imagine what you had to… Jon. Jon, please…”

He lifts a hand, and wipes away the tears falling again from Jon’s eyes, and tries not to feel even more nauseous when Jon flinches away from his touch. 

“I wanted to.” Jon whispers. Martin’s heart stutters, stops, freezes in his chest. “I tried, I tried not to read it but, I couldn’t stop and I could feel it, I was so  _ hungry _ , Martin, it was this empty pit inside me.” Jon shakes in Martin’s grip, and Martin wishes there was anything, any single thing he could say to make this better. “I was hungry, and then I was drowning, it was so much, it’s still so much, I can feel  _ everything _ .”

Jon closes his eyes tight, presses his hand (and by etension, Martin’s hand, becuase fuck if he is going to let go now) to his forehead as if in pain. 

“I wanted it to stop.” He says. “I wanted to stop feeling so… hungry. So breathless. So I… I did it. I wouldn’t stop. It was like the statements, I couldn’t  _ control  _ myself.”

Martin can’t say anything except a quiet, resigned, “‘Oh, Jon…”, and pulls him into a tight hug. Jon freezes at the contact, before allowing his head to rest in the crook of Martin’s neck. Here, with his arms around Jon, Martin can almost pretend that the world isn’t ending outside their home. Jon is crying again, Martin can feel the tears soaking into his shoulder, but maybe Jon had never even stopped. 

“It wasn’t your fault.” He whispers, gentle, soothing, like he is talking to a child. “It wasn’t, Jon.”

Martin cannot help but feel like he’s lying. The next time he sees Elias, he swears to himself, he is going to kill him, consequences be damned. 

It is dark, or as dark as it can be, now, when Jon quietens, sighs with a broken resignation that breaks Martin’s heart. 

“Lets go to bed, Jon.” Martin says. “You need to rest. We’ll, we’ll figure it out. Tomorrow, I’ll call the others and we can… we’ll come up with something.” He finishes, lamely. Jon doesn't reply, but he does stand when Martin does, and follow him to the bedroom. His eyes are distant, out of focus and so far away. Martin hopes that whenever he is, it’s happier than here, but somehow he doubts it. 

Jon lays on the bed with no resistance, doesn’t move or acknowledge Martin in anyway, not even when Martin smooths back hair that is streaked with far more grey hairs than this morning, and kisses his forehead gently. 

“I’ll clear up.” Martin says. “Just… just get some sleep, okay? I’ll keep an eye - I mean, I’ll keep a watch on the house.”

“They won’t come in here.” Jon says, eyes still vacant. “Not after what I did.”

Martin stops, realises that that doesn’t even really surprise him, (what could anymore?), and sighs. 

“Okay. One less thing to worry about, at least.” Martin feels the optimism in his voice sink like a stone in a lake. 

“Goodnight, Jon.” He continues instead, then hesitates at the doorway, watching Jon’s outline on the bed, still staring at the wall with no expression. “I… I love you.”

After weeks of a response to that, it stings more than it should that Jon doesn't respond. 


	2. don't you dare look out your window (darling, everything's on fire)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sometimes, you lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon's POV of ep 160. Feat a lot of introspection and flowery language. 
> 
> Please comment and kudos and come and find me on all the relevent platforms! (@MJDashwood on twitter, and marianne-dash-wood on tumblr!)

The Archivist is drowning. 

He doesn't remember much of the statement. That thick cloying dread that rose up as soon as he heard his own voice reading the words had suffocated him, pulled a veil of terror and panic over his eyes. 

He could feel the paper crumpling under his grasp, could still read the words even as he trembled. Could still read the words as his tears stained the page and made the ink run. 

He was so  _ stupid _ . He was stupid and selfih and so so wrong to belive that they were safe, that even Elias couldn’t touch them here. 

Blood dripped from his mouth; he had bitten his tongue, trying to stop it’s movements. It had kept moving of its own accord, words pulled from his unwilling mouth. 

He tried to raise his free hand, to tear the page, to be free, but his hand refused to go near the page. Every word hurt, like someone was driving a knife into his heart, a syllable at a time. And yet, there was an awful, glorias, dreadful part of him that was singing, screaming to be let loose, and Jon felt like if he stopped for a second, that it would swallow him whole and there would be nothing left. Between lilting words and smiles that were not his own, he gasped and choked on nothing at all. 

His free fingers scrabbled and pulled at his throat. He could feel his fingernails raking across the soft skin there, across his scars and his hands became heavy and wet with blood. There was desperation in every part of his body, every muscle was taut, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t, let go. 

His vision blurred and there was a roaring in his ears that wasn’t just from the thunder outside. There was a desperate, pointless hope in Jon’s heart, that Martin was safe, that he saw the weather and came home sooner than planned, that he would run in and tear the page from his hands.

God, he wanted Martin in this moment, more than ever before. With the monster roaring inside of him, and the one using his words like a loudspeaker, Jon had never felt more alone, more trapped. 

Martin, oh god,  _ Martin.  _

There was bile and blood in his throat, as Elias’s words slipped unbidden from his lips. He wanted to scream. He wanted to stop. He wanted to  _ sing.  _

A million ears and eyes seemed to watch him, and none was hungrier that the one inside of him. 

The door was straining under the weight of his knowledge, under the pressure from all of the fears that haunted his nightmares. He was slipping, splintering under the weight of that awful, terrible thing called truth. He couldn’t keep the door closed anymore. He didn’t know if he wanted to. 

No,  _ no _ , he didn’t want to do this, he knew he didn’t. But the yawning terrible thing in his chest, in his stomach didn’t agree. It wanted. It wanted more than Jon even knew it was possible to want. 

There’s a moment, there’s a pause in the flow, and Jon thinks, that perhaps, it’s over, maybe he stopped it, maybe he kept it closed. He thinks of the others, of Georgie and her dimpled smile, the warmth of the Admiral curled on his chest. Melanie’s sharp wit and cutting remarks. Daisy’s quiet, solid presence. Basira’s bravery, her loyalty even when he hadn’t earned it. He thinks of Martin, his smile like the sun and the stars and the moon all at once. He thinks of mornings broken only by gentle smiles and quiet breathing. He thinks of cold November walks, counting sheep and cows and Martin’s freckles in the afternoon light. Hands held tight. The promise of safety in a glance, in a touch, in an embrace. How these last few weeks have been the happiest he has been in years. For a moment, Jon thinks that would be enough. 

Then the dam breaks. The door shatters and Jon is swept away in a torrent of knowledge and hunger and awestruck terror. He is drowning in words, and the Archivist rises, ravenous and ready. 

The Archivist doesn’t love, doesn’t rest his head in another's arms. It doesn’t want early mornings and late flame bright nights. It wants the power of information, the intricacies of secrets, the horrifying soul bearing truth. 

It hungers, and Jon is helpless as it devours everything and anything. 

_ Martin _ , he thinks, and then the world is nothing but rage and ruin.

* * *

He comes back to himself slowly, then all at once. His cheek stings, but Martin is there, Martin is with him, and maybe everything will be okay. 

The weight of it presses on him in a single realisation and it feels like the floor has dropped out underneath him as he stands on shaky legs. 

He can see everything. He can feel everything. Millions, billions of voices are screaming out in pain and terror and fear as the world is consumed, and he can feel every single moment of it. Next to him, Martin’s fear is bright, keening, aching desperation that he wishes wasn’t his fault. But it is his fault. All there is now is truth, the horrible truth, and the truth is that it is all his fault. 

The monster in his chest is quiet, satisfied. No, he realises, staring up at the sky that is peeling him back into nothing but a terrified child. The monster is him, and it is singing. 

He falls to his knees, barely aware of Martin beside him. Adoration courses though him, adoration that is not his own, and terror that is wholly his. 

His whisper is heartbroken and awestruck and worshipful all at once. Something inside him laughs, and he doesn’t have the strength to stop it anymore. It spills out of his lips like bile, the Archivist’s laughter, and he feels Martin’s heart break beside him. He knows it, just as surely as he knows that the world is gone.

_ I’m sorry _ , he thinks, not even his tears blurring out the sky that is no longer the sky,  _ I’m so sorry, Martin, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry.  _

His chest burns. He hasn’t cried like this since his parents died; they are brackish, wretched sobs and he doesn't quite know who they are for. Himself? The doomed world? The truth of it, that nothing he ever chose mattered at all? 

Martin holds him, and they sit there, watching the end of the world. 


	3. a place where we don't have to feel unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> at the end of everything, you will be found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from 'you will be found' from DEH
> 
> this chapter was a bastard to write and i don't wanna look at it anymore
> 
> hmu on all the usual places! Hope you enjoyed and expect more fluff and stuff soon (next up, apocolypse girlfriends)

The day after the end of the world dawns bright and early. The sky rains thick and heavy, a substance that is far too viscous to be water. The lighting makes the world flash dark, and there are unspeakable horrors squirming and writhing at the gates to the small farm in the scottish valley. Beyond the gates, and apart from a few boarded windows, the house appears untouched. Even a few of the flowers have their faces turned towards what remains of the sun, staring back at the Eye that hangs there, seeing all but knowing nothing. 

It is silent, apart from the sloshing of the not-rain that is falling from the sky. And in the silence, there is a scream. It is wrenching and broken and sounds like static has crept into their throat. The suddenness of it causes Martin to lurch from the rose patterned armchair he had sat down in the night before. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, especially not clutching an Ikea table leg, which was the only weapon he had been able to find. Be that as it may, he sprints towards the noise, blinking the sleep from his eyes as he bursts through the door to the bedroom. The moment he does, the scream cuts off. He looks around wildly, for worms, for encroaching darkness or flames, for anything that might have gotten in while he was asleep.

But there is nothing. Nothing, save for Jon, sitting up in bed with wild and terrified eyes. There is a faint, sickly green glow there, fading now as he blinks and focuses on Martin in the doorway. 

“Jon?” Martin asks, lowering the table leg, because Jon still looks terrified, scared of  _ him _ , and that in itself is Martin’s worst fear. “Jon, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t reply, but scrambles to his feet instead, tripping over himself and the fallen bedsheets in his race to the window. Martin realises too late what he is going to do. 

“Jon, wait, don’t-”

Jon throws open the curtain and stars out at the nightmare of the world. Over his shoulder, in the distance, Martin can see something long limbed and unspeakable reach into a distant house, and pull something out. Blood drips down the windows. The Eye stares back. 

Jon starts to hyperventilate, sliding to the floor, ineffectually grabbing the bed post to steady himself.

“Oh god…” He whispers.. “I thought… I thought I was dreaming.” He looks up at Martin then, pleadingly. “Please tell me this is just a dream.  _ Please _ , Martin.”

Martin can feel a lump in his throat. Nothing should make Jon look so devastated, so broken. And there is nothing he can do to pick up the pieces. 

“I’m sorry.” Martin says, though what for he isn’t sure. For not being able to lie? For not being enough to stop Jonah using Jon to bring about the apocalypse? For being the reason that Jon was finally able to do this?

(The guilt had settled, heavy and suffocating, like snow after an avalanche, after he read the statement that started and ended it all. He thought he had been saving Jon. He thought he had been saving everyone. And it had been him, his fault that Jon had been able to collect the last fear, that he was scared enough by the thought of losing Martin that he had been marked by it. He knows that Jonah would have likely found another way regardless, but that didn’t erase the guilt that was hot and churning in his stomach.)

He kneels down next to Jon, who is still staring out the window, and he’s murmuring too quiet for Martin to make out in any detail, but there are snatches of names -  _ sasha, tim, georgie, -  _ and please -  _ sorry, sorry, i’m so sorry, i'm so, so sorry -  _ until he unnaturally stills when Martin places a hand on his shoulder. Jon’s gaze snaps from the window to his face, and the gaze is so intense that Martin almost, almost flinches away. But he doesn't, and instead rubbed his thumb gently over the scars on Jon’s hand, there and soft and real, and god, even if the whole world is ending, let it take Jon last, because there isn’t a world where Martin thinks he could live if Jon wasn’t beside him. 

“It’s, it’s real, Jon.” Jon inhales, sharp and ragged, but Martin continues. “I’m so sorry, but it happened. It… Jonah did it.”

“I did it.” Jon’s voice cracks.

“Jonah did it.” Martin insists. “We couldn’t have stopped this.”

“We could have  _ tried!” _ Jon snarls, vicious and angry and lashing out like an injured animal. Martin keeps talking, gentle and slow. 

“You did try, Jon, you did.” His free hand softly brushes the scratches on Jon’s neck, gently touches the cuts on his lip where he bit down trying to stop himself from reading. “I know you did. It’s okay. You  _ tried.  _ And that matters more than anything. That  _ matters _ , Jon.”

Jon’s face crumples. “I could… In my dreams, I was… I could only watch as they,  _ tore  _ through the world, I felt, every single person they’ve hurt and killed and hunted, I was there in every second of their death, their paranoia, their fear. I felt it all, Martin, and I can still, every second, I can still  _ feel  _ every broken bone and flayed muscle and tortured mind and I’m just watching, over and over and over and over again-”

“Jon.” Martin says, insistently. “Jon, stop.”

He doesn't, his mouth rambling, unwanted knowledge pouring out along with sharp gasping sobs that he doesn’t seem to notice he’s making. 

“The Hunt cornered a girl down the back of the old Victoria theatre and they, they played with their food before they let her try to run again. The Boneturner has set up shop on Fleet Street and there is nothing, nothing human left there at all. The whole of York is, darkness and shadow and anything that comes out of there is mangled and ruined and it’s too much, it’s all too much, there are houses that are only webs now, only hives now. Washington is  _ burning _ , Martin, every square inch of it, the water boils and the pavements melt but nothing is allowed to die-”

Jon’s hand twists into his hair unbidden, and twists and pulls on the greying strands. Blood drips from his mouth; he’s bitten his tongue again.

“Jon!” Martin says, sharp and loud, pulling Jon’s hand away from his head with a strength that Jon looks surprised to see. The sickly green tinge is back in his eyes, pulsing softly in his blown wide pupils. “Jon, stop. Please, stop.”

“I,I can’t stop watching it, Martin, I Know it, I can’t stop Knowing it-”

Martin secures both of Jon’s shaking hands under one of his own (and Jon’ hands are normally strong, lithe and deliberate, but now they feel as flighty and delicate as a baby bird’s bones), and lifts the other to cup Jon’s cheek. 

“Come back, Jon.” Martin says, forcing Jon’s chin upwards even as Jon’s gaze slides off of him. “Please. Come back to me. Jon, Jon,  _ please.” _

Something cracks, shatters in Jon’s expression, and his whole form sags in Martin’s arms. His shoulders don’t shake, but Martin’s jumper gets wet anyway. 

Martin sighs. “Okay. Okay, Jon. Let’s get you into the living room, alright? I’ll make us breakfast, and then we can plan our next move.”

Jon doesn't answer. Martin doesn’t expect him too. But he stands up with Martin’s help, and he sits in the old rose armchair and stares into the mug of tea that Martin hands him. He has a few bites of food that Martin manages to get down him that makes any indication that Jon can still hear him.

There is nothing but the faintest flicker behind Jon’s eyes. It is only that small ember that keeps Martin going. He dreads the day he goes to Jon’s side and finds nothing but empty eyes, a body still breathing but with nothing still living inside. 

“Drink your tea, Jon.” Martin says, like he used to do for his mother so long ago. “Or it’ll go cold.”

Only Jon’s gentle breathing reasurres Martin that he’s not having tea with a corpse. 

* * *

Three days later, the rain finally stops, and the whole world is tinged in red, like a bad Instagram filter. 

Jon and Martin are sitting by the fire, the gentle crackling helping to narrate the statement that Martin is reading aloud. He’s been reading a lot of things aloud; books, poetry, statements (carefully vetted first, of course), anything to fill the desolate silence of the cottage. 

Jon hasn’t spoken for three days. But he has woken up screaming every single night. Martin hasn’t left the cottage either. They have enough food for another few days, and besides, he doesn’t want to leave Jon on his own. Not like this. Not when every moment he steps out of the room, he fears that Jon will be gone by the time he gets back. 

The statements help, he thinks. They’re mundane, almost quaint, compared to what lurks outside. He hopes they help. Jon only seems to be getting thinner and more drained as time goes on. Like the world outside is pulling away all of his colour, his determination, his drive. 

Martin doesn't cry, not even when his phone calls to Basira go straight to voicemail, not even when Jon stares at him blankly as he carries him to bed, not even in the dark and quiet of their bedroom where the space between them feels endless. 

He’s not good enough, for Jon. Not enough to keep him fighting, not enough to keep him  _ Jon _ . He cannot protect him from the nightmares in his mind, he can’t coax him out to try and find a way out of this. God, he’s so tired. 

The only indication is that there is even something left are the tears that sometimes roll down Jon’s cheeks. After a while, Martin stops wiping them away, and they stop coming. 

He’s halfway through a statement about Bertha Jenkin’s parrot who isn’t a parrot when he stops. Drags a hand down his face, and sighs. 

“What’s the point?” He says quietly. “I know you’re not listening, Jon. And that’s, that’s okay. You’re trying to cope in your own way, and I get that, I just…” Martin hates how his voice cracks there, and god, he cannot cry now, he can’t. “I just wish you would talk to me, Jon. Please. If I hear any more of my own voice I might cut my ears off.” 

The joke falls, lands, sinks like a stone. “Okay.”

Martin, stands, stretches, and presses a kiss to Jon’s forehead. 

“The world has gone to shit, Jon, I know that, but… I’m still here. We’re still here. I don’t… I can’t lose you as well. I need you. Not because you can save the world but because… Well, I think you know why.”

No response. 

“I’m going to make dinner. Curry okay?”

No response. 

“Alright.”

In the corners of the cottage, fog gathers. 

* * *

He doesn't mean to start crying over dinner, he really doesn't. But seeing Jon sitting there with absolutely no expression, looking more like a marble statue than a man, holding his bowl like he’s forgotten how to use it, well, at this point it’s more than he can take. Something twists around his heart and suddenly his vision is blurry and he can’t breathe properly with the great, hiccuping sobs that are forcing their way out of him. 

Jon doesn't move. 

“You promised you wouldn't leave!” Martin says, once he finally gets enough of himself back to make words again. “You promised me I wouldn't be all on my own anymore, and you’ve gone and left me alone,  _ again _ ! Jon, you -” He takes a deep shuddering breath. “You came and found me, but I can’t find you, I can’t do this alone, please, Jon, I can’t do this alone!”

Only now aware that he’s kneeling on the floor in front of Jon, he reaches up, cups Jon’s face with one hand, holds one of Jon’s thin, cold hands in the other. Tries to get him to look at him. 

“This isn’t… this isn’t how to solve this. We can’t, we can’t give up, I  _ need  _ you, Jon. If you’re not with me, then I can’t… I don’t think I could…” He swallows. “You're not alone. No matter how much it feels like it. You're not alone. I’m here. I’m here with you, Jon, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Jon still isn’t looking at him, and that hurts, it hurts more than he could ever say. His grip on Jon’s hand tightens.

“Jon, Jon, look at me. Look at me, Jon,  _ please _ .”

Slowly, slower than the end of the world, Jon’s gaze moves from a spot behind Martin’s head, to his face, his eyes. Martin almost cries with relief. Jon hasn’t looked at him in days.

“That’s it, that’s.., Jon, keep looking at me, okay? Look at me, and tell me what you see.”

There. A spark, a flame of something, something is still in there, and Martin just needs to - 

Then all at once, Martin is Seen. He is Known, in every single way. He is being peeled back, pulled open and apart. He can feel something, Beholding, the Archivist,  _ Jon _ , flicking through his head like an open file, like an open book. Every part of him, bare and exposed down to the bones of who he is, why he is.

For a second, he is pulled apart and examined in every excruciating detail. Memories flicker in his mind; his 7th birthday party when no one came, the outline of his father, the cruel sneer of his mother when he was 10, 12, 21. The rain that dripped from his nose during the funeral. The hunger and fear and anxiety of the first few days at the Institute. Jon, and the way he curls his fingers into his hair when he is thinking. Jon, and the small smile he got when he figured something out. Jon, when he brought him tea, like he never expected to actually get offered any. Jon, saying his name in anger, in fear, in desperation. Jon, pale and unmoving on a hospital bed. Jon, reaching out of the mist and for him. Jon’s hand in his own, strong and warm and gentle. It is like he is feeling himself falling in love with Jon all over again, from the first moment he saw the crease between his eyes and the look in his eyes. It’s terrifying and wonderful and mortifying all at once. He is known, so intimately and so privately that it almost overwhelmed him, it is too much to bear, it is all far too much. He knows he should be scared. But how can it be, when it is Jon who is looking at him.

And it is Jon, he knows that just as surely as he himself is Known, because he can feel words that are not words, words that are just impulses and feeling in his mind that are not his. He becomes aware of  _ something,  _ looming over him, Seeing him, Knowing him, but that is being shuttered away, the gaze being broken by a veil drawn over his very soul. He knows he is kneeling on the wooden floor of the cottage, but at the same time, he is being held, and something,  _ Jon _ , is protecting him from the gaze of the Beholding, holding everything he is and was and could be in a gentle net of knowledge and love. Because that is what it is. It pulses around him, red strings of fate encircling them both, and every atom of them, these threads of Jon, screams and murmurs and says to him;  _ he’s mine, he’s mine, mine mine mine, you cannot have him, he is mine and I love him, he is  _ ** _mine_ ** _ .  _

The presence, the gaze retreats. That feeling of being held, being loved so utterly and wholly, remains. Jon’s voice is still echoing in his mind (mine, mine,  _ mine _ ), and it’s electric, and he doesn't think he wants it to stop. 

He doesn't even realise he is crying, but suddenly he is just Martin, tears streaming down his cheeks and bracing himself on Jon’s knees, and he is no longer Seen, but he knows Jon is still looking at him. 

And Jon, Jon is crying too, and he’s reaching out to Martin, and he is saying Martin’s name like a prayer, like it’s the rope that’s pulling him out of the hole he has been in these last few days.

“You bastard, you left me.” Martin says, but there is no venom in it, no anger, and he wraps Jon in his arms, pulling him off the chair and onto the floor so he can hold and be held by Jon utterly and entirely. 

“Martin, Martin,  _ Martin- _ ” Jon gasps, “God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t -”

Martin is loathe to pull back from him in this moment, but he does, peppering kisses over Jon’s face, his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks, tasting tears and his own name on Jon’s lips.

“It’s okay.” He says, firmly. “It’s okay, you’re here now, you’re here, and I’m here, and neither of us are going anywhere.”

“No.” Jon replies, just as firmly. “No, we’re not. I promised not to leave you alone, and I won’t. I'm so sorry I did, I didn’t think.”

“No, you generally don’t.” Martin says, as dryly as he can for someone whose words are still wet with his own tears, and laughs in relief when Jon smiles, a real and proper smile, just for Martin. 

“I think we’re even now.” Jon says, “On the whole, pulling each other out of despair and loneliness.”, and Martin laughs like he hasn’t in days, pressing his forehead against Jon’s and just, drinks in his presence. 

“‘What did you do?” Martin asks, eyes still closed, leaning against Jon. “Where did you go?”

Jon’s smile fades slightly. “I was… I was the Archive. I couldn’t stop Seeing, and it hurt, and I didn’t… I didn’t want to hurt you, I knew if I Saw you, it would want you want your secrets and your past and it would hurt you, Martin, trying to get your statement, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that. I thought if I, I retreated, I wouldn’t be able to.”

“Jon, you’re so fucking stupid.” Martin says, and surges forward, pressing a kiss to Jon’s mouth. When he pulls away, Jon is smiling, that small, slightly dopey smile that makes Martin’s heart skip a beat, and he knows Jon only shows when Martin has done something particularly endearing. 

There’s a feeling of pure adoration that bursts, happy and gentle in the back of his mind, and it tastes like tea and dust and Jon, and okay, that’s new. 

“What is that?” Martin asks, and feels that flame ebb and flow and retreat cautiously into an ember, and suddenly he is a lot colder than he was before. 

Jon winces, looks sheepish. “I saw you, Martin. But I wasn’t… I wasn’t the only person looking. I tried to protect you from it.”

“So…” Martin says, and he licks his lips, and thinks in the general direction of that ember in his mind:  _ You’re in my head now? _

“Yes.” Jon replies aloud, and his eyes widen when he realises exactly where the question came from. “Wait, oh god, Martin, I didn’t-”

Martin can see the start of another downward spiral and quickly presses his hand to Jon’s in an attempt to stop it before it goes further. 

“It’s alright. It’s okay, Jon.” He smiles as he feels the thread that is Jon calm and settle. “You did it to protect me. I can’t be angry at that, it’s hardly the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in the name of protecting someone.”

“I could try and remove it, if you wanted-” Jon starts, but Martin’s stomach drops at the thought, the idea of this warmth being pulled from him and leaving him cold and alone, and he immediately shakes his head. 

“We’ll face this together.” Martin says, when his heart finally calms down. “You don’t leave me alone, and now, now I can help you with your… Seeing, okay? You don’t have to hold all of these burdens on your own anymore. I’m here.”

“You are.” Jon says, gently tracing Martin’s cheek with his hand, just like he did in the Lonely so long ago, his voice breathless with realisation. “Martin, you’re here, and all I could see was the world ending but you… you pulled me back. You… the coffin, it wasn’t my rib at all, was it, I saw, it was  _ you _ .”

“Yeah, I did, why - oh.” Martin sits back on his heels, not out of reach but with enough space to think though this realisation. “I’m… I’m your anchor?”

“You’re my anchor.” Jon confirms, and leans in to kiss him. After days of its absence, the slow, gentle kiss warms Martin like tea on a cold day. 

“‘I love you, Jon.” Martin says, no stuttering, no fear, and even if the world outside is ending, Jon is here, and he’s back and he won’t be leaving Martin again, and that, that is something worth fighting to stay alive for. 

“I love you, too.” Jon says, quiet and sincere, and with a gentleness that Martin last heard him use in the Lonely. “And, I can’t… I cannot promise that I won’t leave like that again, but… I will always come back. You just might have to call for me.”

“I will.” Martin replies, even if the idea of Jon leaving again makes his heart twist and his stomach drop. He squeezes Jon’s hand, rubs a thumb over the burn scar there. 

_ I always will, _ he thinks, sends that thought and intent and his determination to Jon and feels him flare in comfort and adoration in response. 

“That’s, that’s going to take some getting used too.” Jon mutters. “I’ll try my best to keep myself from seeing things you don’t want me to see.”

Martin smiles. “Your third eye just took a long look into my soul, I think the time for privacy has long past. Jon, I don’t mind that.” He adds, as he sees Jon wince. “I can’t think of anyone else I would rather have in my head more.”

Jon laughs quietly. “And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. In terms of heads and minds, that is.”

Martin laughs then, too. “Planning on staying in someone else's head, are you?” He asks, letting a teasing tone into his voice. 

“No!” Jon says, before realising that Martin was joking, and huffs, looking away as Martin chuckles. His gaze slowly comes back around to rest with Martin again. 

You know…” He says, carefully. “You have the most beautiful mind, Martin.”

“So you  _ are  _ planning to make a habit of it.” Martin teases, but Jon shakes his head, suddenly serious. 

“No, Martin, I-I mean it. It’s… it is so beautiful. I can’t even begin to describe it, it’s warm, and real and bright, it shines so brightly it’s like I’m staring at the sun and I don’t want to look away.” The reverence in his tone takes Martin’s breath away. 

“Does that scare you, Martin?” Jon asks, after a pause, after Martin remembers to breathe somewhat. “Are you afraid of me?”

Martin thinks of sharp remarks, and paranoid shouting, the fear in the eyes of the Archivist’s victims, statements ripped from unwilling minds, laughter under a watching sky. Martin thinks of cups of tea and Jon gently reassuring a woman that he believes her, thinks of a man climbing into two places with no chance of escape and doing it anyway. He thinks of hands holding his in the fog, on a train, on walks in the valleys. Cold mornings and soft smiles. Martin is scared of so, so many things. He is afraid of losing Jon; to flame, to parasites, to fog and dirt and to ambition, but every time he came close, Jon always came back. 

“No.” Martin says softly. “No, I’m not afraid of you.”

For the first time since the world ended, he’s not afraid. He is here,  _ Jon  _ is here, they are together, and nothing, Martin swears, will change that.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed!
> 
> please kudos/comment if you liked it, and please please please come scream at me on twitter @MJDashwood, or on tumblr @marianne-dash-wood!!
> 
> Love you all!!!


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